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Parliamentary group on bees is launched in Switzerland

Bee on lavender
Beekeepers hope politicians will get more involved in protecting threatened pollinators. Keystone

Swiss MPs have set up for the first time a parliamentary group on bees and pollinators.

The group was launched on Wednesday over a honey breakfast, according to a press releaseExternal link from Apisuisse, the umbrella organisation for beekeepers. Apisuisse hopes the initiative will help promote the cause of these threatened but vital insects. 

It said 60 parliamentarians had agreed to join the group, making it one of the biggest in parliament. The parliamentary group is headed by MPs Bernhard Guhl of the centre-right Conservative Democratic Party, who is himself a beekeeper, and Mathias Reynard of the leftwing Social Democratic Party. 

Apisuisse hopes beekeepers’ concerns will be better heard in the public space and that there will be more political commitment to protecting bees, be they wild or honey bees. In particular, the organisation is urging a coherent strategy to promote biodiversity and effective measures to cut the use of pesticides. 

The risk to pollinators through the use of pesticides must be reduced immediately, it says, while further efforts are also needed to combat bee diseases and pests such as the Varroa mite more effectively. 

In a recent study, Swiss researchers pointed to a “combination effect” of two stress factors as a reason for the rapid decline of the honey bee: insecticides and the Varroa mite. 

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Mites and insecticides prove killer combo for honey bees

This content was published on Researchers from the Institute of Bee Health at the University of BernExternal link and the COLOSS honey bee research associationExternal link studied the “combination effect” of two stress factors: insecticides and a type of mite. The researchers treated workers in honey bee colonies with two selected insecticides (neonicotinoids). These had no influence on the weight…

Read more: Mites and insecticides prove killer combo for honey bees


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